lunes, 20 de febrero de 2023

AUTOS ELÉCTRICOS Y MEDIO AMBIENTE

Fuente: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/02/daniel-sterbuleac/electric-vehicles-are-anti-market-and-anti-environment/


 True environmental impact of the EV surge

Disregarding the gas that most living creatures normally produce through respiration, there are more and more details surfacing about the actual environmental impact of the EV, especially when it comes to producing the batteries and transporting the electricity:

  • Batteries are made using many different minerals, especially lithium. Lithium is mined using a huge amount of water; in parts of the world, lithium mining already depleted more than half of the water reserves, affecting drastically the lives of indigenous farmers. Lithium can also leak into underground water, altering the soil and killing fauna and livestock. This is not MSM’s climate anxiety; this is actual people who once lived peacefully, and are now losing their sources of food and water;
  • Cobalt mining is another socio-economic disability: most of its mining (around 70%) takes place in Congo, but the mines are owned and/or controlled by Chinese companies. You have the Chinese companies controlling the monopoly of a rare metal in a poor African country; slavery, poor payment, child labor, human rights violations are on the menu. I will stick to diesel;
  • Massive amounts of toxic waste are created for rare earth elements (e.g. dysprosium and neodymium) mining: around 2,000 tonnes for 1 ton of rare earth element;
  • Simply put, there are not enough minerals to cover for practically building the necessary batteries and electricity transportation grids. For copper, miles-deep mines would need to be excavated. It would take millennia to extract the needed lithium to fully replace ICE cars;
  • I would add that oil spills are indeed unwanted and polluting. However, these are rare “accidents” and not a normal part of the equation, as we can see in the case of EV battery fabrication. Not to mention that scientists are actively developing new oil removal solutions.

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